They would open themselves up to lawsuits if they changed the colors too drastically after selling people on the shown representation of the product. I also think most of the concepts I've seen in this thread are a bit too orange in order to faithfully represent the shots of him where he does appear more yellowy. Remember Unicron looks different from shot to shot in the same movie hence the drama about his face design, and the original chin being a clever middle ground between pointed and not pointed by way of the chin beard accommodating both looks.

On the night Unicron got funded they sent out emails to the backers, and in that image you can see they tinted him just slightly more orange compared to the Haslab promotional images. I think we may see a little bit of red added into his color in the end but it'll still trend towards yellow more than the ultra saturated orange we're seeing in this thread.

 

That colour is pretty much spot on

 

Would they? Usually there's some standard "colors are subject to change" language that protects against that, but I confess I don't recall specifically regarding Unicron.

 

It would be a bit dumb for all involved but if he came out looking super orange that like armada repaint we keep seeing there may be an argument for it. Or that mockup a few posts back where the legs are also way darker and the silver is more white. I know for a fact in promo vids that they've stated the prototype is meant to be their closest representation of the final product, and that prototype is a deciding factor in getting the $600+ out of customers. Nudging it a bit orange is probably fine since people are asking for it and it's within reason of the prototype's color which are indeed subject to change. But if it's so drastically changed such that the whole aesthetic changes it could be considered dishonest I think.

 

I'm sure you're right, although the question of what constitutes "so drastically... that the whole aesthetic changes..." would mean different things to different people. A lot of changes that mean very little to me are Very Big Deals (TM) to some people.

 

Hey, I like orange...  

 

IIRC, the various prototypes were hand painted and 3D printed, so they will definitely look different than the professionally molded, tampographed and painted run. For a 3D print, I'd say it's pretty darn good. I fully expect the final version to look a tad more "bland". Happened with the Sail Barge. Prototype looked slightly more saturated and colorful. Still looks good in person. I expect Haslab to make a kick-arse final product.

 

you are correct sir ... as some one in the legal field it blows me away how ill-informed ppl on this site are regarding the day-to-day workings of modern jurisprudence ... these are likely the same ppl who assume every Dick and Jane spilling McD’s coffee all over themselves are retiring to Mar a Lago w/massive settlements lol

 

Do we have confirmation that Unicron will be fully painted? I’m expecting coloured plastic with no paint for most of his parts. I assumed he would be more like a standard Titan class figure rather than a Masterpiece. I’m hoping to be wrong though.

Was the sail barge painted or just coloured plastic?

 

I’m sure it’ll be primarily just injected colored plastic, but it will still have some paint apps. I never said it would be fully painted.

 

The pics in Figure King were similarly orange-y.



comparison pic by @Cheem The Rup

 

It looks to be the same photo, with photo manipulation tweaking the saturation & color wheel. White background is obviously the printed 3D version. Black Background is the same 3D version, tweaked to the final colors.

That being said, looking at older Figureking pics of MP toys, they tend to boost the color richness, so in-hand, Unicron is probably somewhere inbetween.

 

Definitely the same photos with lots of contrast and saturation adjustments.
The white background is clearly the original, while the black background is the result of a cut and paste job.

If you look at the wings in the robot mode shot you can see a lot of artifacting from the photo editor not cropping around the photo carefully.

~L~

 

Planning to do a few more analysis posts looking at different aspects of the Haslab figure and how it matches up against the source material (e.g., robot mode, head sculpt, etc.). Some previous ones below:

- Planet mode Haslab Unicron
- Maw Haslab Unicron & Haslab Unicron

Topic of this post is the transformation. Some of this has already been posted in the Zeta thread during a nerd fight, but this is probably the best place for it.

One of the things I really like about Haslab Unicron’s design is that I believe the transformation references key scenes in the movie, which I will walk through below.



The first transformation step we see is the blue/gray shell crack along jigsaw lines and recede to reveal more orange underneath. We then get a larger look to see that shell is moving everywhere to reveal more of the yellow/orange body underneath.



Haslab obviously can’t make the planet shell just disappear / get smaller, so the engineers took the approach of folding them away. I think they actually reference the same jigsaw pattern between some of the larger blue / gray plates.



From there, the arms open up. Although the ring is now misaligned (potentially because this animation sequence is based on an earlier concept), you can tell this is the back of the planet, given that what will become the arms still carry the equatorial spires (and are in plane with the rest of them).



Haslab recapitulates this sequence, with arms formed from the center of the planet’s back.



When the arms open, they reveal a portion from inside the planet that extends to become the legs. There is a cool sequence I am not capturing that shows how the legs unfold from this section. Haslab does not actually do this extension trick (probably because I don’t think the weight would support it), but the legs are behind the arms and then flip down.



As shown above, I think the robot parts are oriented reasonably correctly relative to the movie. The legs are behind the arms, and just like the movie you need the planet back / arms to open first before the legs can be extended (or flipped down, in the case of the figure).



The right forearm moves up to reveal the hand. Note again that the orientation is correct, as we are viewing the transforming planet from the back.



Then the left forearm moves up.



Both are identical to how Haslab does it, with the forearms sliding up to reveal the hands.

From there, the rest of transformation is hard to digest in terms of what is going on, and the torso and head are revealed. To be clear, HasLab doesn’t reproduce any of this (though it would have been cool to at least have panels that slide to reveal the abs!). They just take the maw shell up and over to reveal the head and torso. However, I do think the head is positioned correctly above / behind the maw, because Galvatron was near the maw and ends up around the waist area when the big abs reveal happens. Hard to say for sure though.

Anyway, a transformation that perfectly mirrors the transformation sequence is obviously impossible, but you can tell Takara designers really made the effort to bring parts of the onscreen transformation to life. They even reference some of these scenes in one of the first Haslab videos.

Overall I am very satisifed with the transformation and how it compares to the original. Understanding that a lot of it is just moving planetary surface plates to the legs and back, i’m personally happy that they referenced as much as they did (the arms in particular are a big focus of the movie transformation). As for the third party version, it pulls off an inspired transformation that results in a beautiful robot mode, but it’s one that starts with a heavily compromised planet mode and then doesn’t bother to reference the movie transformation in any capacity. Given the different design prioriities that went into the two figures, I think that makes sense, but it is another distinction between the two. As always, tastes vary and I’m sure we’ll all be happy with whichever ones we get.

 

Thank you for another great post. I love the analysis you provide along with the screenshots to back it up.

 

I think the jigsaw shell is the main reference I hadn't noticed before. Nice catch!

 

Yeah, I remember going through the transformation video next to his TFTM transformation and noting a lot of those transformation cues myself; great to see someone else did and posted a detailed comparison.

 

Thanks guys! These are fun for me to do, and there’s a lot of time to kill before this starts shipping next year (especially during a pandemic). For reference, here is the earlier concept art I mentioned in the post regarding ring orientation.



Originally the rings were around the equator of the planet, and I remember reading the transformation sequence is one of the first things they animated. Not sure how it could eat other planets that way, but there you go.

 

I wonder if that's the penny that dropped... either he wasn't originally going to eat planets at all, and they changed their mind, or someone asked how it'd be possible with a social distancing hula hoop in the way and they changed the look to allow us to see him munch

 

In one of the earliest drafts of the script I've read Unicron released a corrosive pink mist to digest planets, rather than crunching and munching.


Image courtesy of TFWiki.net

The Marvel comics adaptation is adapted from this script, so the mist is present in this telling.

~L~